Momentive Chemicals to build two new Louisiana formaldehyde plants

Momentive Specialty Chemicals on Friday announced the planned construction of two new formaldehyde plants in Geismar, Louisiana, and Luling, Louisiana.

The company plans to invest approximately $66 million in the construction of these new, world-scale formaldehyde plants primarily in 2014 and 2015, with capacity of more than 400,000 tpy.

The Luling site will serve Monsanto by providing formaldehyde through a direct pipeline into its adjacent manufacturing facility. 

The Luling location is expected to become operational in the first quarter of 2016, while the Geismar site is expected to come online in the fourth quarter of 2015. The Geismar site will also have a direct pipeline delivery system into the adjacent manufacturing sites of BASF and Huntsman. 

The expansion projects, which received tax incentives from Louisiana Economic Development (LED), will support a total of 68 jobs.

“As the global leader in formaldehyde and formaldehyde-based resins for the forest products industry, we are pleased to announce these strategic expansions as they significantly strengthen our presence in North America,” said Dale Plante, an executive vice president at Momentive.

“Targeted investments like these, in partnership with our customers, are a key part of our global growth strategy that the company continues to execute against going forward," he added. "The additional capacity, which is complementary to our existing integrated network of assets, will enable us to meet the anticipated growth in the Gulf Coast region for several significant and long-time customers."

Momentive's Louisiana-based expansions also follow a recently-announced expansion in Curitiba, Brazil. 

Momentive Specialty Chemicals is the world’s largest producer of formaldehyde, a key raw material used to manufacture forest products resins and thousands of other chemicals and products, including herbicides, fungicides, methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) and butanediol (BDO).